In a recently resurfaced 2003 interview clip with Corey Taylor on Portuguese TV, Taylor used the media appearance to very publicly vent about a fight he was in at the time with Slipknot bandmate, Shawn Crahan, aka Clown.
Per Corey, Clown was none too pleased about Stone Sour‘s then recent reformation. He believed that Clown was concerned that he and Jim (Root) were going to quit Slipknot to do Stone Sour full time. As a result of the friction, Clown did not talk to Taylor for upwards of a year. Here’s the full summary of their issues, directly from Corey’s mouth:
“Whether he likes it or not, I’m behind him doing whatever he wants, you know? Because I know he had some very inflammatory remarks about Stone Sour in the beginning. But then, when he realized that me and Jim weren’t leaving Slipknot, he was like ‘oh okay whatever blah blah blah’, and that really kind of pissed me off. You know, the fact that he would just run out and start running his mouth like that because he thought that we were gonna leave the band when, if he would have just talked to us, he would have found out that we had no plans of leaving Slipknot.”
Corey continues: “You know, I haven’t talked to Clown in seven months. He never calls me… I mean, I saw him when my son was born. I call him all the time – he’s never home and even when he is home he never answers the phone. So it’s like how can you talk about something when you haven’t even talked to me, you know?”
He goes on: “I think that’s very fucked up… half the time I can’t understand what the hell Clown is saying anyway because he’s just, he really kind of walks the line between genius and idiot half the time. And that’s not putting him down – he would say the same thing. He’s really an idiot savant, you know, cuz he’s very into what he does, but half the time he says one thing and then he does something different.”
Taking a step back and looking at the big picture, Corey concludes with: “So, could you replace somebody in Slipknot? Absolutely. Could you recreate what we’ve done? Absolutely not. Because I mean it took these nine people to do what we did on these two albums and go out and tour the way we did. Because I don’t think there’s anybody out there that could do what we did to tell you the truth, in that situation. Before anybody gets pissed, you’ve never been in this situation before. We bled. I mean, we really destroyed ourselves. I came very very close to not ever being able to sing again because of Slipknot. I almost went blind in my right eye because of Slipknot. And it’s a crazy place. It’s a very, very psychological place to be. It takes a special kind of person to be in it. And I think what we did can never be duplicated. Could you replace someone in Slipknot? Yes. Could you replace Slipknot? Fuck No.
Thankfully these days, Clown and Corey are on amazing terms. Ironically, it sounds like the same cannot be said for Stone Sour, though. Last week, Taylor had this to say about the band: “It’s been a bitter pill to swallow, but I’ve also reached an age where I refuse to waste any time with people who I don’t enjoy being with, let’s put it that way. And that’s saying more than I actually should be saying.” Hopefully things get sorted in that camp soon.
In the meantime, you can watch the whole Portuguese TV interview with Corey that we transcribed above right here:
‘There’s still so much drama and issues’: Corey Taylor Talks Stone Sour Hiatus